Version 1.2 of the ArcGIS JavaScript API released

Version 1.2 of the ArcGIS JavaScript API is now available! You can begin referencing it in your code with this tag:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://serverapi.arcgisonline.com/jsapi/arcgis/?v=1.2"></script>

This release corresponds with the release of ArcGIS Server 9.3 Service Pack 1. However, the ArcGIS JavaScript API 1.2 can work with services from both ArcGIS Server 9.3 Final and 9.3 SP1.

This post details some of the most important new features in the ArcGIS JavaScript API 1.2. You can also find various samples in the online SDK that demonstrate these features.

Support for Image Services

You can add ArcGIS Server Image Services to the map using ArcGISImageServiceLayer. Image services represent file-based raster datasets or raster collections published with the ArcGIS Server Image extension. You can control the image type, compression type for JPG, image bands, and interpolation type.

Support for Dojo 1.2.

When you reference the ArcGIS JavaScript API in your code, you also have access to version 1.2 of the Dojo Toolkit. See the Dojo 1.2 Release Notes for migration information and a full list of improvements.

More flexibility with cached and dynamic layers

You can now define which tile levels of a cached service are exposed in the map. For example, you may want to use ArcGIS Online data for small scales only, then switch to your own cached data at large scales. Or you may want to make a cached service available at large scales only in order to focus the map on a certain geographic area.

You can also force dynamic maps to conform to the scale levels in a tiling scheme. This allows you to show a cached map at small scales, then easily switch to a dynamic map at large scales.

Refreshable map layers

Map service layers have a refresh() method. This is useful if back-end editors are modifying the data and you want to ensure the end user of the application sees the most recent data from the server.

Improved graphics performance

The performance of the graphics layer is improved when adding a large number of graphics to the map.

Projection of dynamic map services on the fly

Dynamic map services can be projected on the fly to match the spatial reference you set for the map. Previously, the spatial reference was defined by the base layer. Now the map can be defined using any spatial reference. Valid only with dynamic map layers.

New methods for the geometry service

GeometryService has new methods that allow for creating points in polygons for labeling purposes, and determining spatial relations of geometries. These geometries do not have to come from a map service; they can be geometries returned from a task or a query to a non-ArcGIS Web service.

Bug fixes

The following bugs have been fixed in version 1.2:

• NIM034356 Double-click zoom is a default navigation type for the JavaScript API at version 1.2.
• NIM036958 Style Attributes (STYLE_DASHDOTDOT and STYLE_NULL) of SimpleLineSymbol now work as expected.
• NIM036833 Graphic.attribute names that contain decimal points (mytable.area) can be used in an InfoWindow through the Graphic.InfoTemplate.

We’d be happy to read your feedback about version 1.2 as comments to this post.

Contributed by the ArcGIS JavaScript API Team